Ann Arbor will be well-represented at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which begin Thursday, with five area ice dancers competing in the event. We’re profiling all of them Thursday, so check back later for more on Alex Shibutani, Maia Shibutani and Evan Bates.

By now, Meryl Davis and Charlie White tell their origin story with ease, having honed it over the years of their steady rise in prominence.

It starts 16 years ago, when they were 8 and 9 years old at the Detroit Skating Club and a coach thought the two could make a strong ice dancing duo.

“Charlie was a couple of months ahead of me in terms of the ice dance world,” Davis said. “And so when he was partnered up with someone who hadn’t had any ice dancing experience, he was a little bit…”

“He had to take a couple of steps back with me, but he got over it,” Davis said.

Punctuated by a laugh, Davis and White told the story to a throng of reporters earlier this month following a practice in Canton, comfortable in the spotlight brought on by becoming the country’s longest-tenured and most successful ice dancing duo.

From that start -- when they were “a perfect match, as perfect as an 8 and 9 year old boy and girl could be,” in White’s words -- Davis and White have grown to become the ice dancing gold medal favorites in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The two University of Michigan students will lean on that comfortable demeanor when they enter their sport’s biggest stage with the highest expectations.

“We’ve had a career where we’ve really lived in the moment,” White said. “It’s helped define our skating and practice, and I think it’s really become just a second nature. So, really, it hasn’t mattered in the past how big the moment is, we always have the same approach, and I think that’s what’s helped us be so successful.”

This will mark Davis and White’s second games. Four years ago in Vancouver, Davis said the duo was largely trying to make sure it didn’t miss out on the Olympic experience.

They walked away from those games with a silver medal -- finishing behind only training partners Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada -- and heightened expectations.

“This time, I think we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves in terms of performance,” Davis said. “And just performing the way we’ve been practicing, performing the way we’ve really set the bar for ourselves to perform. It’s definitely a different approach this time around.”

Since those games, Davis and White have won two of four world championship titles, including in 2013. Now, they enter the games with the hoopla of magazine photo shoots, interviews, sponsorships and the expectations of being the country’s best bet for a figure skating gold medal.

“They were going in and it was great and they were having fun and it didn’t matter how they did,” Cheryl Davis, Meryl’s mother, said of Vancouver. “It was just fabulous to be at the Olympics. And this time going in they want more. They’re hungrier. I think that it’s a little more stressful.”

It’s a remarkable rise, considering the unique path the two took through ice dancing.

Meryl Davis and Charlie White practice at the Arctic Edge of Canton on Jan. 17, 2014.
Patrick Record | The Ann Arbor News

Compared to other figure skaters that were homeschooled and devoted hours each day to the sport, Davis and White took a more measured approach to ice dancing. The two both attended public school, and limited practices to an hour after school each day, plus some time on Saturdays, their mothers said.
White played hockey until he was 18, and was involved with student government. Davis played soccer and the flute.
“They had other activities that they were not willing to give up,” Jacqui White, Charlie’s mother, said. “They didn’t need to.”

Once they graduated high school, both started the whirlwind of being students at Michigan along with a full skating schedule that took them to the pinnacle of their sport, including six consecutive national championships.

And while they might have picked up some expectations along the way, the two say that doesn’t add to the expectations they already have for themselves.

“I think that because we expect so much out of ourselves, those expectations that have been slowly coming in over the years since the last Olympic games, I don’t think they really play a huge role in the way we approach competition,” Davis said. “Because we’ve grown so accustomed to expecting things out of ourselves.”